Max Blumenthal at Alakhbar:
The NY Times’ Ethan Bronner falsely claimed in his report on the prisoner exchange that “Fatah runs the West Bank.” In fact, the West Bank is under Israeli military occupation, including the small areas (Area A) that the Palestinian Authority was granted control over under the Oslo Accords. The Israeli military and civil administration has official control over 60% of the West Bank (Area C), according to the guidelines of the Oslo Accords, and authorizes the residency of over 350,000 Jewish Israeli settlers there. Isn’t it time the Times assign a fact checker to keep watch over the chronically sloppy Bronner?
In Israel, the names were not highlighted, for fear that there would be significant organized opposition to the deal.
Its probably a good thing, as otherwise the 440 first batch would likely still be in prison.
When you consider Israeli refusal to issue building permits and destruction of houses, cisterns, water-wells due to owners’ non-possession of (impossible to get) Israeli building permits, it is especially galling to be told that it is all Fatah’s fault. Additionally, many people are indisposed to believe that fatah is responsible for all the land confiscation and settlement building that’s going on in WB.
Of course, one possibility in extenuation for poor-dear Ethan Bronner is that by the term-of-art “West Bank” he means the small part [of the West Bank including East Jerusalem] in which Fatah has some sort of governmental role. But even there, Israel has a heavy hand.
Sloppy? I am sure he knows exactly who runs the West Bank, his son is one of the people running it…
The settlers and the IDF civil administration run the West Bank.
http://www.diakonia.se/sa/node.asp?node=853
This is why all signposts in the West Bank show the name in Hebrew first, in the largest letters. Because there is no such place as palestine and the Arabs who live there only arrived in the 1920s. Did I get that right ?
I’m surprised Bronner doesn’t call it Judea and Samaria.
If I had 2 dogs I would call them Judea and Samaria. Or else Ron and Arad.